The Mental Health Crisis in Sports: Why Athletes Are Struggling More Than Ever

Athletes are often seen as resilient, disciplined, and mentally tough. But athletes are still human, and today’s sports environment is placing many of them under extraordinary emotional strain.

A growing body of research suggests that the current mental health crisis in sports is not being caused by one single issue. It is the result of multiple pressures colliding at once: the stress of emerging adulthood, rising performance demands, discrimination, constant digital exposure, low mental health literacy, and the lasting disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the article you shared, Claudia Reardon describes this as the “perfect storm” affecting athlete mental health.

At Onrise, we think that framing is exactly right.

Why mental health in sports is getting worse

Athletes do not struggle only because of what happens in competition. They struggle because of the combination of sport pressure and life pressure.

The source article explains that athletes face the same mental health risks as everyone else, but sport adds its own unique risk factors. Depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use disorders, burnout, injuries, and declining academic or occupational functioning are all associated with worsening mental health in athletes. The article also notes that suicide is now the second leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 34, making this a crisis that sports cannot ignore.

In other words, athlete mental health is not a side issue. It is a core health and performance issue.

1. Emerging adulthood is already hard — sport can make it harder

One of the most important ideas in the article is that many athletes are navigating emerging adulthood at the same time they are trying to perform at a high level. This period, usually from the late teens to the mid-20s, is when many people are building identity, learning independence, forming relationships, and figuring out who they are outside their family. It also overlaps with the peak age of onset for many mental health disorders.

For athletes, especially student-athletes, the demands of sport can crowd out the time and emotional space needed to develop those life skills. The article points out that highly scheduled athletes may struggle to reach normal milestones of adulthood, and that parental overinvolvement can sometimes worsen vulnerability and dependence instead of reducing it.

This matters because many athletes are not just trying to win. They are trying to become adults while living inside high-pressure systems.

2. Discrimination and racism have real mental health consequences

The article also makes clear that racism and discrimination are mental health issues in sports. Minority athletes may experience systemic, interpersonal, and internalized discrimination, and they may also struggle to find providers who understand their lived experience or reflect their identity. That can reduce help-seeking and increase emotional burden.

For many athletes, the stress is not only about sport. It is also about carrying the weight of representation, dealing with inequity, and feeling pressure to stay silent in environments that reward compliance more than honesty.

This is one reason culturally responsive, athlete-specific mental health care matters so much.

3. Youth sports are becoming too professionalized too early

Another major factor in the mental health crisis in youth sports is the early professionalization of athletic life. The article describes how many young athletes are now expected to specialize early, train year-round, and treat sport like a full-time job long before college. This can lead to more injuries, poor life balance, identity foreclosure, burnout, and a constant sense of pressure.

The article also notes that performance-centered coaching climates are associated with worse mental health and higher burnout than mastery-centered environments.

This is important for parents and coaches: not every path that looks “serious” is healthy.

4. Athletes and coaches often still lack mental health literacy

A powerful point in the article is that many athletes still do not have the language, knowledge, or confidence to recognize their own mental health symptoms. The same is true of many coaches, staff members, and caregivers. The author describes mental health literacy as the knowledge and beliefs that help people recognize, manage, or prevent mental health problems. When that literacy is low, help-seeking drops and stigma stays high.

This is especially relevant in athletics, where toughness is often prized and emotional struggle can still be misunderstood as weakness.

If athletes do not know what they are experiencing, and the adults around them do not know how to respond, symptoms can worsen before anyone intervenes.

5. Technology and the 24/7 world are wearing athletes down

The article also points to a growing issue that many families and athletes already feel: technology is changing the emotional climate of sports.

Athletes are now exposed to constant criticism, comparison, harassment, and pressure through social media and digital communication. They may feel obligated to stay visible and engaged online, even when that exposure is hurting their mood, anxiety, body image, or sleep. The article notes that more screen time is associated with less sleep, and that sleep is especially important in athletes for recovery and injury prevention.

This is one reason Onrise talks so much about human connection. Athletes do not need endless digital noise. They need trusted people.

6. COVID may be over, but its mental health effects are not

One of the strongest points in the article is that the pandemic did not just disrupt sports for a moment. It left lasting emotional consequences.

The author notes that after organized sports shut down in 2020, depression symptoms in adolescent athletes rose sharply. Even after sports resumed, prepandemic mental health baselines did not fully return. Athletes lost routine, social connection, exercise-based mood benefits, support systems, and in some cases even their expected path through sport. For some, the pandemic forced an abrupt and unplanned exit from athletic identity altogether.

That kind of rupture can leave emotional residue long after the crisis itself ends.

What this means for athlete mental health now

The larger message is not just that athlete mental health is struggling. It is that many of the pressures are synergistic. They layer on top of each other.

An athlete might be navigating identity formation, managing performance pressure, spending too much time online, getting too little sleep, dealing with injury, facing racism or exclusion, receiving mixed messages from adults — and still being expected to perform normally.

That is a lot for any brain to hold.

What athletes need

The research calls for better systems, not just more awareness. That means stronger mental health literacy, trauma-informed care, culturally competent support, healthier youth sport structures, education on social media and sleep hygiene, and a sporting culture that protects athletes as people, not just performers.

At Onrise, we would add one more point: athletes often need support that feels private, athlete-specific, and human. If support feels too internal, too performative, or too hard to access, many athletes will keep struggling quietly.

Bottom line

The mental health crisis in sports is real, and it is being driven by a modern mix of pressures that athletes cannot simply “tough out.” Emerging adulthood, discrimination, early sport professionalization, poor mental health literacy, digital overload, and the enduring effects of COVID have created a powerful and painful environment for many athletes.

This is not a sign that athletes are weak.

It is a sign that the system around them needs to get stronger.

Source

Reardon CL. The Mental Health Crisis in Sports: The Perfect Storm of Contemporary Factors.